Just because a law says you have to do something doesn’t make it due process.

So your entire argument is that I am misusing a word, because I am using it in the context of how it is commonly understood vs the legal definition? Yeah, great argument.

How are they being silenced? Because anytime you make something harder, more embarrassing, or riskier, people won’t do it. This is also not hard to understand.

I understand that. I don’t understand why you believe it is significantly harder or more embarrassing to have one more person (lawyer) in the room and to answer their questions, in addition to already having to tell the story to strangers appointed by the school anyway. It’s nearly insignificant difference compared to how much damage false allegations do.

PS: If you want to pointlessly focus on word lawyering.

Citizens may also be entitled to have the government observe or offer fair procedures, whether or not those procedures have been provided for in the law on the basis of which it is acting. Action denying the process that is “due” would be unconstitutional. Suppose, for example, state law gives students a right to a public education, but doesn’t say anything about discipline. Before the state could take that right away from a student, by expelling her for misbehavior, it would have to provide fair procedures, i.e. “due process.”

• LLI

But I was never trying to talk about legal definition but the common sense right not to be punished by government law/regulation without reason.